Monday, 22 July 2013

Today I welcome guest author Emmie Dark to my blog! So over to Emmie...

Fake
it to Make it – Getting to “The End”

No matter what kind of writer you are—what genre or
style—writing the whole book, all the way through to ‘The End’ is a daunting
task. I think it’s even more daunting for romance writers, because so many
romance publishers ask for an initial three chapters as a submission. It’s easy
to get good at the first three chapters—and never navigate the choppy waters of
the middle or the end.

But if you’re serious about getting published, you
need to be able to write a whole book—all the way to ‘The End’. Here are a few
tricks that I’ve learned that have helped me get there.

Avoid
distractions

You’ve just
worked out that your heroine loves horses. In fact she used to have a horse
when she was a child. What kind of horse? You don’t know that much about
horses, but Wikipedia has everything you’ll ever need to know!

We’ve all been caught in an internet black hole. You
go searching for ‘Shetland Ponies’ and two hours later emerge with beautiful photos
of a New England-barn style interior décor and a knitting pattern. It’s been fascinating, but you haven’t got
anywhere near reaching your word count for the day.

Unless it’s central to your plot and you absolutely
cannot continue without knowing more, resist the temptation to go internet
surfing. That kind of research can be done at other times of the day (when
you’re watching TV for example) not during your precious writing hours.

Same goes if you can’t find exactly the right word you
want. Just type XX and move on. Come back to it later, when you’ve got time to
forage through Roget’s.

Write
‘as if’

A good friend and critique partner gave me this advice
and it’s been invaluable. I’m primarily a ‘pantser’—I tend to write the story
as I go, although once I get some of the way in and have a better idea of my
characters, I do tend to do a little planning.

But always, in every book, at some point in the story
something comes to light with a character or a plot point that changes
something I’ve written earlier. Sometimes it’s simple—a minor detail about the
character’s family or background. Sometimes it’s more complex—something to do
with the character’s whole motivation.

It’s tempting to stop at that point and go back and fix everything related to
it in your earlier chapters. All this will do is slow you down. Keep going ‘as
if’ you have gone back and fixed it. Make notes somewhere about what needs to
be fixed so you don’t forget, but keep going. You’re going to have to go back
and revise anyway (possibly multiple times!). So keep the fixing for all at
once.

It’s taken me a long time to learn this lesson, but I’m convinced it’s speeded
up my writing.

Turn
off the editor and write anyway

It’s such a common piece of advice given to new
writers I know I pretty much got sick of hearing it. “Turn off my inner editor?
Yeah right! You haven’t heard that voice nagging on and on and on…”

I understand, believe me, I really do! But you know
what? This is one of those times where you just have to do what your mother has
probably told you a hundred times: Put on your big girl pants and deal with it.

All writers, no matter how successful, have days when they wonder if what
they’re writing is crap. When it’s a struggle to get every word down on the
page. The difference between published authors and wannabe writers? Authors do
it anyway. There’s no, “I’ll wait until I’m in the mood tomorrow. I’ll write
better then.” Yes, you might. But you’ll have lost a day of writing. Yes, it is
easier to write when you’re ‘in the mood’. But as Ernest Hemingway (I think!)
said, “It’s easy to write. All you do it sit down at a typewriter, open a vein
and bleed.”

If you’ve never
made it all the way to ‘The End’, I highly recommend you give it a try. Not
only is it good discipline. Not only does it give you practice at writing a
whole book—practice you’ll dearly need once you’re published. It also gives you
the most inspiring sense of satisfaction. But I can’t tell you exactly how
wonderful it feels to type those words—you’ll have to find out for yourself.

Emmie’s
latest SuperRomance release "Just For Today"“ came out in June and is
available now online.